2nd Busy Book

Much earlier this year, my mom and I made another quiet book for Jo. (See the 1st one here.)  We did a lot of planning first, then some shopping, and finally, got sewing. All the machine sewing was done by me, while all the hand-sewing was done by my mom. She has serious skills!

Below each picture, I'll link to the source for the idea.

We decided on a blue theme for the backgrounds, and chose this cute patterned felt for the covers:

Each page has 3 grommets, which are all held together with binder rings.

We also created a hook-and-loop closure to hold everything inside, which - considering the weight of some of these pages - was a very good idea!

Spread 1:

The first page is her name:

Source

...with removable letters. The 'O' makes a great toddler bracelet, by the way.

The next page is a family tree. Behind each flap is a picture of a family member.

We combined several ideas: Source 1 Source 2 Source 3

Jo loves this page, but she's not very quiet about it, as she points to the pictures and shouts, "Dada! Mama!"

The pictures are protected behind clear vinyl squares. My mom hand-sewed down each vinyl square individually, so it wouldn't be too hard to swap out a picture if we want an update.

Spread 2:

A rainbow of zippers!

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We used an old holey mattress pad for the clouds.  My mom added some silver thread for raindrops.

The next page is a little garden, with carrots and radishes.

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They all can be pulled up or planted again, and have twine roots securing them to the book. I sewed a small piece of popsicle stick inside each vegetable to give them a little extra stability.

I left a flap at the bottom, so we can easily access the root system if need be.

Spread 3:

This page features a lacing exercise (which she hasn't figured out yet).

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And underneath is a cute giraffe!

Source - while we were inspired by her giraffe idea, we thought this one was cuter.

With removable bow-ties!

The next page teaches counting (and Roman numerals, too, just for fun).  Jo really likes to move the beads around.

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Spread 4:

I made a little vest with functioning snaps!

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The pockets are real, too, and are a great place to hide a little surprise snack.

The last page is just full of fun things to look at and feel. We considered making this an 'I Spy' page, but decided that at her age, this is just as much fun. This page accounts for most of the bulk and weight of this book. (And a side note: it's not super quiet when it gets moved!)

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Each section has a double layer of white tulle. This holds everything securely, but still allows things to be felt and moved. The top section holds just a bunch of random, fun, colorful items.

This one has rainbow pony beads, plus all the letters in 'Josephine'.

And this last one has these cool translucent beads, with some bright objects mixed in.

The back cover matches the front cover. We chose to leave both of them plain.

We had so much fun making this for her and watching it come together. I really enjoyed the process of passing pages back and forth to carry out our individual portions of the work.

Jo gets to play with this every Sunday during church. She's not always super quiet with it, but she sure enjoys playing with it!

Love and Giraffes,

Leah Joy